Ja­pan rat­i­fies Paris Agree­ment af­ter pact en­ters into force

Ja­pan yes­ter­day rat­i­fied the 2015 Paris Cli­mate Change Agree­ment to cut emis­sions and pre­vent cli­mate change, four days af­ter the global pact of­fi­cially en­tered into force. The agree­ment seeks to wean the world econ­omy off fos­sil fu­els in the sec­ond half of the cen­tury, lim­it­ing the rise in av­er­age world tem­per­a­tures to “well be­low” 2.0 de­grees Cel­sius above prein­dus­trial times.

The de­lay in rat­i­fi­ca­tion could limit Ja­pan’s abil­ity to in­flu­ence ne­go­ti­a­tions on the finer de­tails of the agree­ment. Those talks were set to for­mally be­gin dur­ing the COP-22 meet­ing in Morocco that started on Mon­day. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from nearly 200 coun­tries con­vened in Marrakesh, Morocco for two weeks to dis­cuss the nuts and bolts of the Paris ac­cord and the poli­cies, tech­nol­ogy and fi­nance needed to en­sure the Paris goals are achieved. “Ja­pan aims to play a lead­ing role in craft­ing ar­range­ments that raises trans­parency in each coun­try’s emis­sion cuts to help ac­com­plish the spirit of the Paris agree­ment,” Ja­pan’s Prime Min­is­ter Shinzo Abe said in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

Back­ing for the ac­cord from sev­eral Eu­ro­pean na­tions, Canada, Bo­livia and Nepal last month pushed the agree­ment past the 55 per­cent of emit­ters limit needed for im­ple­men­ta­tion, with US Pres­i­dent Barack Obama call­ing for other na­tions to sign up “as soon as pos­si­ble.” The agree­ment is meant to cut global green­house gas emis­sions, mainly from burning fos­sil fu­els, to limit floods, droughts, more pow­er­ful storms and ris­ing ocean lev­els. Ja­pan has also been crit­i­cized for press­ing ahead with plans to open scores of new coal-fired power plants at home and as Prime Min­is­ter Shinzo Abe’s gov­ern­ment pushes coal burning power tech­nol­ogy abroad. — Reuters